As described here and here, Matt Borghi and I had a great time in Philadelphia supporting Convocation. While there, we had the honor of recording an episode of Echoes with John Diliberto. Our Living Room Concert will air on today’s episode. Check your local listings (here and here) and tune in!
Echoes‘s official announcement here.
It’s been a week since Matt Borghi and I returned home to East Lansing from our promotional tour of Philadelphia. (Matt wrote some great reflections and thoughts here and here.) I’ve wanted to post something but have been quite busy catching up on grading and other work. That, and I’m still taking it all in. To say that our trek was memorable is an understatement. It’s hard to select just a few things to mention, but I’ll do what I can. While I’d love to gush on and on about every minor detail, neither you nor I have the time. Instead of giving the play-by-play, there are a some overall feelings and impressions that are worth discussion. What I was most struck by throughout the weekend was the tremendous sense of community.
I’ve performed for many audiences over the years in a great many styles and in a great many places, from academic to public to corporate and everything in between. However, I must say that I don’t think I’ve ever been – with or without Matt – surrounded by and performed for such an active, engaged, and thoughtful community as my time in Philly. Jason Sloan told Matt and me that we’d be spoiled rotten, and he couldn’t have been more accurate. As mentioned in my last post, we performed a set at The Gatherings Concert Series along with Dave Luxton and Vic Hennegan, a live overnight set on WXPN’s historic Star’s End, and a Living Room Concert and interview on PRI’s prestigious Echoes. That was an exciting enough schedule, but the experience itself was unparalleled.
It wasn’t just the size of the audience, as that varied for everything (a couple hundred+ at The Gathering, a dozen-ish in the studio at Star’s End, and a cast/crew of two for Echoes). The common thread for all was a mixture of:
• engagement: They bought in. The listeners came along with us on our musical journey, as opposed to simply watching us play our instruments
• contextual knowledge: They got it. It’s not that I was wearing a tweed jacket and pontificating about art all weekend, but I talked with many folks about a wide range of musical topics including some common themes of the blog. And it wasn’t just about academic content and history, but rather many in attendance knew what we were going for and could discuss it intelligently.
• support: They cared. The ambient scene in Philly is not only strong but special. Its members know that they’ve cultivated something unique, and have banded together to ensure that it continues. (For an interesting look into that, watch the videos here.) A number of attendees traveled quite a distance, including one couple who drove from Rochester, NY. And it was a welcome change of pace to meet and talk with people who knew our names and music!
• lack of ego: Neither of the other performing acts nor the other artists in attendance got competitive. Matt and I, Luxton, and Hennegan all presented varying styles, and not once did I get a sense that one act was out to best another.
I like to joke that when Matt and I perform public ambient sets we generally have two people actively watching, one of whom doesn’t care. It felt so great to escape that for a few consecutive performances. The Gatherings audience was akin to those attending an academic recital or a contemporary music concert. The only difference is that they weren’t there to intellectualize it, only to take it in. All this and I haven’t yet mentioned the gorgeous venue The Gathering, St. Mary’s Hamilton Village in Philadelphia. The acoustics were superb and visually it was stunning.
Our Star’s End set was a powerful experience. We were live on the air, playing continuously from 4:00 AM to 5:00 AM, having been up since The Gathering earlier that evening/the night before. Matt and I made some music we’re deeply proud of, and we were surrounded by a small but attentive crew and private audience. The time flew by; we were in the music all the while. The feeling in the room when we were finished is hard to describe, but suffice it to say that it won’t be easy to recreate any time soon. We’re greatly indebted to Star’s End host and alchemist Chuck van Zyl for making those two experiences possible. Chuck really rolled out the red carpet for us, and all of his thorough work and assistance during the weeks leading up to our visit meant a great deal. He made both Matt and myself feel like part of the Philly family. (And while I’m gushing over Chuck, thanks to him once again for the nice review of Convocation several months back!) And thanks to Art, Jeff, and Royce for the mixing and sound, and to Rich for the videography.
Monday 10.21 included our stop by Echoes studios for our Living Room Concert and interview. Host John Diliberto and producer/engineer Jeff Towne couldn’t have been more gracious hosts. We performed a Living Room Concert comprised of three selections from Convocation with brief interviews to accompany each. Afterwards we put down our axes and enjoyed a lengthy, thoughtful interview. John asked some insightful and interesting questions, and about knocked me off of my chair when he told me he saw Lookout Farm twice (!!) in the mid-70s. (The jealousy has since remained deep in my bones.) Our episode will air sometime in November or December; stay tuned for more official information. Off the mic, our conversation with both John and Jeff was just as engaging and enjoyable. It was a true honor for both Matt and I, and we can’t thank John and Jeff enough for the opportunity.
It’s worth noting that Jeff Towne was intensely working behind the scenes at all three events. He helped to make the whole weekend a pleasurable and memorable one.
Our trip to Philly was easily one of my favorite musical experiences as a performer. The stars aligned so that not only the music was a success, but also the connections, audience, colleagues, and travel. Of course, looking back, Matt and I see it as our first musical trek to Philly, as we definitely hope to return.
This weekend I’ll be in the Philadelphia area for a promotional tour supporting Convocation, my album with my good friend and collaborator guitarist Matt Borghi. It’s not as much of a “performance” tour as there’s only one “public” show in Philadelphia, but we’ll be hitting up the holy trinity of ambient music outlets: The Gatherings Concert Series, a live set on ambient mainstay Star’s End on Philadelphia’s WXPN, and an Echoes Living Room Concert. If you happen to be in the greater Philadelphia area or that region of the east coast, do check out The Gathering if you’re so inclined. We’re performing an opening set for Vic Hennegan and Dave Luxton, who’ll each be performing solo sets.
We open the show at 8:00 PM on Saturday 10.19.13 at St. Mary’s Hamilton Village, 3916 Locust Walk on University of Pennsylvania’s campus. The show promises to offer much variety, as we’re all at different points in the “ambient” spectrum and all representing different parts of the country.
Official page with artist information here.
Advance tickets are available at a discount through http://www.ticketweb.com. Proceeds benefit CIMA of PA. For complete details please visit http://www.thegatherings.org.
Following that evening’s performance, all three acts will also perform live on the overnight broadcast of the long-running Star’s End radio show on WXPN. For complete details visit http://www.starsend.org. You can read a nice review of Convocation by Chuck van Zyl of Star’s End here.
Monday morning, before our return trip to the midwest, we’ll have the honor of doing a Living Room Concert at the Echoes studios. We’re humbled and excited to be performing for the two titans of ambient radio.
[Previous entry on Convocation here.]
Lately I’ve been thinking quite a bit about artistic intention and reception. It’s been difficult to get all of my duck-like ideas in a row, and I’ll in no way fully address the issue with one post, but it’s worth planting the seed.
I’ve quietly been focused on this the last couple months, but it really came to the fore when Matt Borghi and I touched on it in conversation during one of our recent lunches (where we wax philosophically about music, comedy, politics, the internet, our neighborhoods, and all things in between). Improvisation is perhaps the cornerstone of our musical relationship, and on this particular day we got to talking about improvisation itself. He mentioned an interesting dialogue he’d recently had with another musician, and – I’m paraphrasing so I could be a little off – that, generally, music that is largely improvised suggests at least a small degree of laziness on the part of the performer(s). In some cases this is true. However, to use that as an overall guiding principle shocked me. Especially since it came from another musician in a somewhat related realm.
As one example, my ambient-based work with Matt, we improvise not out of lack of forethought but because we’re feeding off of one another in the moment. What we each bring to the table continually changes. Yes, we have “rehearsed” many times, but we’re not rehearsing content. Instead we’re rehearsing our engaging one another musically. We’re continually learning and refining how we listen and respond to one another. Conversely, while there’s much room for improvising in our Teag & PK catalogue, we rehearse and adhere to our musical forms and roadmaps, as those songs are based on set content.
[Shameless plug: please check out Convocation if you haven’t yet. We’re quite proud of it. 🙂 ]
In both aforementioned settings – ambient and folkish – the performer’s respect for the content (and how that content is created) is a key factor. Another important element is a respect for the craft of being able to make the music. This could the technical facility/mastery of an instrument and/or the craft of songwriting or improvising. So not only am I concerned with the style of music I’m performing, but how well I may execute it on a given instrument. How can I properly express myself through an instrument I can’t play? Furthermore, how can I express myself on an instrument I can play but through a style I cannot?
Much more to come on this as I start to flesh out some related thoughts…
Convocation, the new album by Matt Borghi and myself, is now available. I mentioned it a couple posts back when previewing 2013. The album was officially released digitally on January 31, but we’ve been waiting to really advertise it until we approved and finalized the hard copies.
My collaboration with Matt is five years old this year, and it’s been an ongoing reference on this blog. From our time together in The Elevator Conspiracy to our duo work in a variety of genres under both our own names and Teag & PK, we’ve been fighting the good fight – at least if you ask us for our opinion – for a few years now. A couple of last year’s posts were specifically about us. (See here and here.) Long story short, we cover a lot of musical ground. We started out with lounge-ish and jam-ish rock in The Elevator Conspiracy. Then, as a duo, we first explored acoustic indie-rock territory, but quickly pursued a parallel path of ambient-centric improvisation. We’ve continued down both paths the last couple years, but rarely have we mixed them. As Teag & PK, we perform original songs in coffee houses and on the radio. As Matt Borghi & Michael Teager, we explore sound in art galleries and other “listening space” environments. Convocation is an accidental culmination of the latter, and our first full-length album of either style.
I say accidental because we never intended for this to be an album. At least not originally. After a ~6-8 month spurt with our singer/songwriter material last year, we decided to go ambient at the last minute before a gig. (Matt wrote a great article about that evening here.) That gig’s success reinvigorated our ambient leanings, and so we booked some studio time a couple weeks later at Dan Jaquint‘s The Fort. We entered the studio with no plan other than wanting to capture some our new-found spirit. At best, we hoped to walk away with ~15 minutes of usable material for use as a launching point for an eventual album or project down the road. Because of our low expectations, our “rehearsing” consisted of a couple lunches, phone calls, and emails. Matt sent me about six minutes worth of sketches that he had been messing with, but we hadn’t played together since the aforementioned gig. Horn in hand, I noodled with those sketches for about ten minutes. That was it.
Once we were all set to go in the studio, we told Dan that we just wanted to record some chunks of improvisations. With our levels, etc., set, all he really needed to do was start and stop the recording equipment. For the first attempt, we improvised over a recently-composed loop of Matt’s for about 15-20 minutes. Once finished, we looked at each other with much relief – this was going much better than expected. So over the next ninety minutes we laid down four more chunks: two fully improvised without pre-conceived loops, and two fully improvised over loops that Matt had put together since our last gig. We had surprised ourselves and ended up with possibly more than our hoped-for 15-20 minutes of material.
All five of that evening’s sonic treks make up Convocation. Presented in the order in which they were recorded, all of the source material was recorded live. I say “source material” because Matt did some post-production work with the mix and other audiophile-related items, but, except for cutting out some chunks for brevity’s sake, the musical content wasn’t copied-and-pasted together a la Bitches Brew. Over the next several months we contemplated what to do with the material, finally deciding to release it via Matt’s record label Slo.Blor Media – an excellent source for ambient music and sound art.)
For purists, this album arguably may not be a strictly “ambient” work. While the whole album is grounded in an ambient foundation, the focal point, if there is one, is the improvisational monologues and dialogues. That’s where one may possibly hear jazz-ish influences, though don’t waste your time listening for any bop licks. Each of the five tracks is a collective improvisation over soundscapes, two of which were fully improvised and continually change. No “melodies,” “hooks,” or “beats.” Just sound. It’s somewhere in the nexus of ambient, jazz, sound art, and contemporary classical. (The latter if it were notated, but it wasn’t so it’s not.) Again, neither Matt nor I care what you call it. We haven’t even settled on the nomenclature. This is something we’re very proud of and want to share with open, willing ears. What you call it is a distant second to how you receive it.
Please do check it out if you’re interested. Feel free to drop a line if you dig it. And if you feel so inclined, feel free to leave a review on iTunes or Amazon.
Convocation is now available via iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, and Spotify. And you may order a hard copy via Kunaki. For more info, you can visit:
http://slobormedia.org
http://www.mattborghi.com
http://michaelteager.com
Here’s the official press release from Slo.Bor Media:
Convocation is the work of ambient composer Matt Borghi (www.mattborghi.com) and saxophonist Michael Teager (www.michaelteager.com). Recorded as a series of improvisational structures in spring of 2012, this is the first recording that Borghi and Teager have done together after a half-decade of working together.
With Convocation, Borghi brings in spacious guitar textures to create a harmonic fabric for Teager to lay out his saxophone playing with subtlety and nuance. With a background in classical and jazz saxophone, Teager brings a wide palette of influences to the music. Listeners will hear aspects of Jan Garbarek, John Coltrane and Dave Liebman that’s juxtaposed over Borghi’s pastoral guitar sounds that have more of their timbral origins in the work of Claude Debussy or Ralph Vaughan-Williams than they do other contemporary ambient guitarists.
Convocation, as a whole, aims to create a deep and timbrally interesting listening experience while also bringing together an interesting musical pairing and improvisational process. Saxophone and ambient music have never sounded like this, and Borghi & Teager attribute this to their friendship, their approach to the work and their diverse musical interests.
Buy the hard copy CD here now, or you can visit online retailers such as Amazon, iTunes, or eMusic to name just a few…